You may be familiar with the names of some of the highest traffic travel blogs out there, like Nomadic Matt, The Travel Episodes, and Against the Compass. How do they get so popular? By leveraging SEO and integrating social media, of course. These are the best ways to promote blogs, but they require a bit of research and strategy to reap the most benefits. Here are some tips on SEO for travel blogs.
How to Increase Travel Blog Traffic
Slight North shares some good advice for SEO travel blog strategies: install Google Analytics. This analytic tool is free and takes only minutes to set up. The “Audience” tab shows how many visits your blog is getting and how long people stay on your site. The “Acquisition” tab shows where it’s coming from, such as Google searches or social media, and the “Behavior” tab shows which of your pages are the most visited.
Google Analytics can serve as a baseline to monitor your site and show you what your audience likes most about it. This data will show you what is working and what you need to tweak or remove. Check-in regularly and create new posts that fit into the parameters.
Travel Blog SEO Keywords
Keyword research is vital for SEO for travel blogs. According to Trip Tins, keywords are the main topics that bloggers focus on for their posts and can be one word or a phrase. Using something basic, like “Italy,” won’t distinguish you from the competition, though, because every other travel blogger writing about that country will also use it. Give it a longer tail and make it specific to your topic: “taking the train from Florence to Venice, Italy” has a narrower focus and targets people seeking this info.
Put your keywords in your URL, blog post titles, headers, meta descriptions, within alt text for images, and throughout your content. It should flow easily and not look as though you just dropped it into the content. Compare these two:
Taking the train from Florence to Venice, Italy, was considerably less expensive than booking a flight.
Do you want to be taking the train from Florence to Venice, Italy, to save money?
Users can spot planted keywords, and without the proper flow, your content will be less trustworthy and authoritative. Remember that Google’s SERP pages prioritize websites that provide the best user experiences, and poorly written content can be unclear, awkward, or misinformative.
More SEO Tips for Travel Blogs
The top travel blogs have incredible photos, videos, and infographics to create feelings of excitement that encourage users to keep reading and book trips. It is vital to use top-quality media that showcases where you’ve been and other locales that your audiences might be interested in. You’ll also want a Q & A section where users can find additional information, reader feedback, and a “related searches” section. Audience members might enjoy your Costa Rica blog but may want to combine a visit there with a trip to a nearby country.
Links are also significant for travel blogs; otherwise, how could that potential customer find the awe-inspiring hotel you stayed at in Morocco? External links direct users from your website to other ones; when others link to your site, they are called backlinks. Internal links take users to other web pages on your site, but you need to make sure that these are related; otherwise, the Google algorithm might get confused and question the actual topic of the content.
Lastly, being active on social media will help drive more organic traffic to your website; Recurpost recommends having a presence on different platforms to reach as many audiences as you can. Curate your best content to share on Facebook, and don’t overload it. With Twitter, you’ll need to be more active: this means spending several hours a day and making concise, knowledgeable posts. Instagram is best for high-quality photos, but don’t post them all at once because it’s best to spread them out. Many successful travel bloggers also have their own YouTube channels, and as with the other platforms, all your posts must be carefully planned out and created before sharing.